Today's broadband networks are constructed of an interconnection of different transport technologies used for different parts of the network such as access, aggregation, transport, and feeding.
The following is a list of acronyms used in the body of the specification and their definitions, which shall apply throughout the specification unless otherwise noted.
Acronyms:
ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode
B2B Business to Business
E2E End to End
DSL Digital Subscriber Line
FTTx Fiber To The x=Home, Node, Cabinet, Building, Curb
GbE Gigabit Ethernet
GPON Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications
HDTV High Definition Television
IP Internet Protocol
IPTV Internet Protocol Television
IPDSLAM Internet Protocol Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
LQ&M Loop Qualification and Monitoring
MPLS Multi-Protocol Label Switching
OAM Operation Administration and Maintenance
OPEX Operational Expenditure
PoP Point of Presence
PVC Permanent Virtual Circuit
QoE Quality of Experience
QoS Quality of Service
RM Resource Manager
RPC Remote Procedure Call
SLA Service Level Agreement
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
VDSL Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line
VLAN Virtual Local Area Network
VoIP Voice over IP
WCDMA Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access
xDSL DSL variants (ADSL, SDSL, etc.)
FIG. 1 depicts a high-level block diagram of a broadband network that is constructed of an interconnection of different transport technologies used for different parts of the network. Network connectivity is supported also by a huge number of different connectivity technologies and network protocols. In order for services to be delivered from an operator point of presence (PoP) to the customer premises with a required quality of service, several technologies, and protocols have to work together end-to-end.
In such a scenario, a unified operation, administration and management (OAM) system covering the whole workflow from service subscription and service provisioning to service quality maintenance has to interface with all network-parts, which is mostly non-standardized and therefore hard to implement. For the wire-line sector such a system is not standardized and it is up to the wire-line operators to fix their own OAM system solution.
Existing wire-line broadband solutions have limitations in supporting features like QoS, mobility and security because there is no unified standardized architecture such as in the mobile sector with GSM or WCDMA (ETSI, 3GPP). Interface descriptions between different technologies are proprietary and non-standardized. This leads to a very scattered workflow when providing services to users and thus to a rather fixed service provisioning models, which leads to broadband network shortcomings, including:
No flexible end to end (e2e) service provisioning
Low grade of business to business (b2b) interface implementation
Low e2e QoS management and SLA assurance
Missing interfaces, protocols for automation
Low grade of automation during service provisioning, high OPEX
Problematic service offer extension
No control and/or feedback from the end user about the QoE (perceived QoS by the end user)
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0039352 discloses a system and method for managing a service in a communication network. A service management system collects quality and/or performance data from the network and compares the collected data with quality and/or performance requirements obtained from a client. A service may be managed by verifying that the network is providing an expected level of service. The service management system, however, appears to communicate with the network using existing, non-standardized interfaces because the larger problem is not discussed or contemplated.
The ETSI Technical Specification, ETSI TS 182 019 v0.3.3 (2006-12) entitled, “Telecommunications and Internet Converged Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking (TISPAN); Resource and Admission Control Sub-system (RACS); Functional Architecture; Release 2” discusses matters related to resource and admission control, but also appears not to contemplate the problem caused by non-standard interfaces between the performance monitor in the access network and the resource manager in the core network.
It would be advantageous to have a system and method for managing access networks connecting to broadband networks that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art. The present invention provides such a system and method.